brain rules

EXERCISE

• Movement gets blood to the brain
• Glucose in the blood provides energy
• Protein allows neurons to connect

SURVIVAL

• Humans have evolved physically over time, adapting to new environments
• The human brain evolved, too, resulting in reasoning skills

WIRING

• No two brains are wired alike
• We all learn differently
• We all demonstrate our learning differently

ATTENTION

• People learn by creating emotional connections to the topics and tasks

SHORT TERM MEMORY

• Repeat to remember
• We improve chances of remembering by recreating the environment wherein we first input the information

Long Term Memory

• Remember to Repeat
• Integrate new knowledge gradually
• Repeat in timed intervals

Sleep well, think well

• "Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." - Dement
• There is a constant tension between sleep and awake
• Most of our brains will signal that sleep is necessary after 16 hours of consciousness
• The brain is not resting while we sleep - although there is still much divide on WHY we need sleep, we are sure of its necessity and the brain's ultra activity during this time

Stressed Brains don't learn the same way

• Not all stress is the same- some boosts learning and some hurts learning
• When a psychological response, an aversive stressor, and the lack of control over the stressor are present, THEN we feel stress in a negative sense
• Learned helplessness: perception of inescapability despite attempts and its associated cognitive collapse

Stimulate more of the senses

• Sensation capturing-> routing into head speak-> perception in higher regions
• Participants in multisensory environments do better than those in unisensory environments according to psychologist Richard Mayer
• The same experience can be perceived differently based on past experiences and the coding of signals

Vision trumps all other senses

• We do not see with our eyes. We see with our brain.
• Less text, more pictures
• Toss PowerPoint (and the like)
• We all hallucinate- what do you see? What is your brain telling you?

Male and female brains are different

• Women are genetically more complex ( 2 x's)
• Male and female brains are structurally and biochemically different
• Response to stress is different between the two sexes: emotional details versus the gist

We are powerful and natural explorers

• If I stick my tongue out , what would you do? What do babies do?
• We learn through active testing: observation, hypothesis, experimentation, and conclusion
• Curiosity is most important!
• We are life-long learners since our brain is malleable and is able create neurons that allow us to learn up until the way we die